Exhibition Exploring American Diplomacy Opens at the Corcoran

Faces of Diplomacy, a collaborative project between the U.S. Department of State and students and faculty from the Corcoran School, opens Monday, Nov. 7 at the Corcoran's Flagg Building.

The exhibit features portraits and videos of six diplomatic professionals working at U.S. Embassies in Rabat, Morocco, and Madrid, Spain, and illustrates the range of skills and functions required in the conduct of American diplomacy. Work began on the exhibit last January, when six undergraduate and six graduate Corcoran students were paired and asked to conceptualize an environmental portrait and video profile of an assigned diplomat.

The student teams began gathering background information on their assigned diplomats while in school in D.C. and later traveled to Morocco and Spain for two weeks in March, when they captured photos and video of the diplomats at work. After returning to D.C., students spent the rest of the semester editing their work, and, this fall, they collaborated with Masters of Arts in Exhibition Design students who designed and installed the exhibit in Gallery 1.

The photos and videos, along with photos and videos created by Corcoran students in the spring of 2014 of 10 other diplomats, will be featured in the currently under-construction U.S. Diplomacy Center, a state-of-the-art museum and education center, at the U.S. Department of State headquarters in Washington, D.C. The center will dedicate 40,000 square feet to bringing the story of American diplomacy to life.